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Béatrice Conde-Petit: Antibiotics are overused in animals

21 Oct 2016

Conde-Petit, the Food Safety Officer at Bühler Technologies, gave a presentation on 'Emerging risks and technological advances' at the Insuring Food safety event at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue.

"So the industry is facing different issues around food safety. Just to mention two, so pathogenic bacteria are still issue number one. Today, we also see the emerging threat of antibiotic resistant bacteria. And, we have the huge of threat of micro-toxins, which is becoming worse due to climate change.

The future risk is that these bacteria are changing, and that these bacteria are for instance, acquiring anti-microbial resistances. This is one of the biggest global public health threats. The anti-microbial resistant issue is a consequence of the overuse of antibiotics, mainly in animal food production. Two-thirds of the antibiotics are fed to animals. This is causing this resistance, which is today, spreading into the environment and other foods. It's all about implementing hygiene measures to reduce antibiotics, for instance, used in animals.

As we need to produce more and more food, also on the industrial scale, it's about delivering the right technology. That means machines, processes, and automation, which is on one hand, having the right performance, and on the other hand, also cost effective - but reducing also the risk of contamination. Hygienic design of facilities processing lines and equipment is one key technology."